Tuesday, 30 May 2017

So excited to get the new Jane Weaver album 'Modern Kosmology' last week - I'm indebted to a couple of fellow bloggers for pointing me in her direction (so a BIG thank you, I think you know who you are!)

It's great (sorry for such an unimaginative adjective) - one of those that just gets better the more you hear it, the more you tune into the detail, the mood, the femininity.

Whilst I'm not a music blogger as such, I don't have a lot to say on other subjects right now, so will just keep to the song and keep it brief today. 'Did You See Butterflies?' is the new single; it's gorgeous (shades of Lush and Stereolab, as mentioned by others before) and I know that because I'm in love with it, I just want you to be as well! Funny how music has that effect, but it's a good thing.

I did see a butterfly yesterday too.... not many around here just yet.

Thursday, 25 May 2017

Long-time friends of this blog will know that I lost a very dear friend, who also happened to be a close neighbour, last year.

Whilst personal memories live on in our own minds, when someone is as creative and special as he was, it's really meaningful for those who knew them to see their talents continue to be celebrated and shared in their absence with a wider audience

So I just wanted to spread the word, as I'm aware many of you may already know his sleeve artwork from your own record collections, that there is a lovely feature about him/interview with brother Matt in the new edition of Classic Pop (issue 29) - available from all good newsagents from today.

Wednesday, 24 May 2017

As I'm drifting off to sleep Monday night, Mr SDS joins me having
stayed up a little later, and tells me the breaking news he’s just read online. Details are still sketchy, but
it’s bad.

Oh no. Your heart
sinks, just sinks. The world is a
flawed, fractured place, full of twisted, tortured souls. You shield yourself from it as much as you
can, you try at least to be kind, caring, in everyday life. It’s
not hard to be those things, not really - is it? To just get on with your own life and let
others get on with theirs, peacefully? We're lucky here, imagine life elsewhere... but still. I
slip back into a restless slumber, these thoughts swirling around, wondering
what nightmare reality I’ll be reading about on Tuesday, things most of us
will never be able to understand.

I’m due to go into central London in the morning too. “Don’t go”, Mr SDS pleads. “Don’t go if you don’t have to”. But I
do have to. I’m very aware that I live
much of my life – out here in the quiet countryside - inside a cosy bubble. There’s the irony: probably the biggest danger I face on a daily
basis is that of an insidious, creeping paranoia about the world outside
it. I must defy that paranoia as much as anything
else, I must go because I want to go.

So I get on the train to London, and on the tube, mingle with
travellers in crowded carriages; there are extra police around, there
are serious faces, I don’t think that Manchester is far from anyone’s
mind this morning. But there are smiley faces too - cities are gutsy places and they remind you: most people
are alright, most people want the same basic, harmless things. In the city of strangers I’m one of them, not
going to give in to fear.

I have such a good day, meeting with lovely friends I haven’t
seen in years – catching up over tea and cake and paintings. I’d have missed all this had I let stupid paranoia win. It's over too soon, and I walk
back to catch my train through the metropolis, lapping up its sharp contrast to my usual habitat,
here where the sirens are my screaming swifts and starlings, and office blocks
and cranes pierce the sky instead of oak and poplar.

“This train does stop at Colchester, doesn’t it?” My solitary daze is broken as the woman with two huge
pieces of luggage, almost as big as her, asks me this. I've just boarded too. Yes, it’s the right train, so she sits across
the aisle from me and continues to talk.

“I’ve been travelling all day...,” she says, “...come down from Manchester…”

Weird how one particular word, on one particular day, can
carry so much weight and meaning and, right out of the blue, it unites us.

I’m drawn to her face, and in a split second of silence I’m
reading her expression. I need to talk, it says. I need to
talk about something. She has the air of someone who’s been awake all
night, with a body tired but brain still buzzing.
Her bright blue eyes are a little watery. Then she starts to tell me that she’s in the
army, and she’d been called on duty in connection with the Manchester Arena incident.

As other people start to board the train, filling up the
seats around me, I could just withdraw from the conversation with the
woman across the aisle. But instead I find myself moving seats, to be with
her. She needs to talk. She needs to talk about something.

And so I spend the next hour in unbroken conversation with a
complete stranger, who’s been awake for 37 hours and who, in spite of having
been stationed in Afghanistan and served as a medic, tells me
how intensely affected she feels by the night’s events. By what she’d seen and heard, what she knew so
far, what lies ahead too. I let her talk. My eyes are a little watery.

But we speak about other stuff too, and some stuff I never
knew, because I’ve never chatted to someone who’s in the army, it’s a world
away from mine - a world away from my cosy bubble. I’m so glad I stepped out of it today; I learned so
much more than I ever bargained for.

There’s no punchline to this, no big revelation… I just want
to express it. My train companion is
going to stay in my mind for a very long while.
She needed to talk, and I’m so glad I could listen.

Thursday, 11 May 2017

Just heard news of the death of Geoffrey Bayldon yesterday, at the age of 93. One of my favourite actors, he was best known, I'm sure, for his fantastically animated and utterly convincing portrayal of Catweazle, the eponymous time-travelling character in what has to be one of the best children's TV programmes ever made. Who could forget electrickery, the telling bone, Castle Saburac and Touchwood the toad? And "Nothing works"! I'm sure its magic rubbed off on many of us of a certain vintage and may explain a lot...

He was known for many other parts too, not least the Crowman in Worzel Gummidge as well as a teacher in the superb film To Sir With Love; he even played the role of a butler in the tea party scene in Marc Bolan's Born to Boogie.

Wednesday, 3 May 2017

Just a quickie today, but had one of those moments yesterday hearing something on the car radio and I'm sure you'll know the kind I mean: Mr SDS was driving and we were nattering away, but when the intro to this song started up I had to tell him to "Shhh!" "It's almost a bit like power pop!" I said, "...'78/'79 jangly power pop! I need to know who it is..."

Tuning myself in, what I heard was actually sweet, shameless, modern pop. The kind that just makes you want to smile because it's simply pure and real and catchy.

We then got stuck behind a maintenance lorry at some roadworks 'cause Anglian Water were digging up the pavement and I was so pleased because it meant I could hear the rest of the song without it having to battle against the engine noise (the joy of a start-stop system!) It will now forever be associated in my mind with that little section of the A131.

Anyway.... it was Declan McKenna with 'Brazil'. He was just 16 when he wrote and recorded this. He looks so young in this original video, aww! (It's since been updated - I much prefer this earlier one posted below). But reading up about him reveals a maturity beyond his years; he self-released this as his first single in August 2015 and, in spite of his lightness of touch musically, his lyrical content is darker and political - a criticism of FIFA awarding the World Cup to Brazil in 2014 without addressing the effect of the huge degree of poverty on its people.

He's touring this month and has an album out in July. At the risk of sounding like an old fart, he helps restore my faith in....oh dear, do I really have to say it like this?!.... the 'youth of today'...

Images

Please note - whilst most images shown here have been taken from my own illustrations and photos or scans I have taken of my own possessions, if you would like me to remove any other images for any reason please contact me directly at the email address for this blog and I will immediately oblige.